Sofía Imber – Founder of the Contemporary Art Museum of Caracas
Sofía Imber, one of the most important personalities of the Venezuelan culture, will receive a tribute next Wednesday, April 20th, 2016, by the Pérez Art Museum Miami.
The journalist and cultural promoter established the Contemporary Museum of Art in Caracas in 1973, and was director thereof for 27 years. During her leadership the institution consolidated a collection of contemporary art that became known as the best collection in Latin-America.
PAMM’s tribute is sponsored by the Arts Connection Foundation, and will be held in the inauguration of the retrospective exhibition from the renowned Colombian artist Doris Salcedo, who recently earned the Nasher Prize.
Imber has left an important legacy in the journalism world and in Venezuelan arts. She starred for many years the TV interview and opinion shows: “Buenos Días” and “Sólo con Sofía”, both widely known. She also worked for the Venezuelan newspapers El Nacional, El Universal and Últimas Noticias, and collaborated with other international publications.
Her three-decade management of the Contemporary Museum of Art of Caracas was remarkable. Imber managed to hold a collection of almost 4,000 works that included valuable pieces from Miró, Picasso and Botero. The museum also innovated the offer services: it offered a special education department of blind people that included the 3-D exploration of works such as Velásquez’ Las Meninas; was the first museum to offer library services specialized in arts, a space of artistic formation for children and adults and a multimedia center for arts.
Sofía Imber has been awarded with numerous prizes: The Venezuelan National award on Journalism; the Venezuelan National Award on Plastic Arts; the Picasso Award (granted by the Unesco); the Honor Legion, chevalier class from the French government; the Aztec Eagle (Mexico); the Boyacá Cross (Colombia); the Merit Order (Italy); the May order (Argentina); the Gabriela Mistral Teaching and Cultural Merit (Chile); the Río Branco Order (Brazil); the Civil Merit Order (Spain) and the Isabel the Catholic Order Great Cross from the Spanish Government.
In 2014 she received in New York the Páez Award of Arts by the Venezuelan American Endowment for the Arts, an acknowledgement granted to people that have contributed the excellence, growth and proliferation of Venezuelan and American art. This ward has also been granted to Annie Leibovitz, Carlos Cruz-Diez and Robert Wilson.
The Universidad Católica Andrés Bello in Caracas opened the Sofía Imber and Carlos Rangel Investigation Room, and also inaugurated the Sofía Imber journalist career. The investigation room digitalized all the interviews conducted by the pair during the Buenos Días show. This university also received donations from Imber’s personal library made up of 14,000 books and catalogues.
